The poem is one of the most interesting of Milton's Latin poems, being rather less affected than most of them by that artificiality of classical allusion which is the bane of such productions. So far as we know, it was the last word on its subject. From henceforth no one questioned Milton's right to be a poet and himself. If he ever afterwards deserted his poetic vocation it was at what he believed to be a still higher call. For the present he lived on quietly at Horton, near the Church where his mother's grave may still be seen; walking often, as we may suppose, about that quietly beautiful country washed by the Thames and crowned by Windsor Castle; and sometimes, as we know from his own words, travelling the seventeen or eighteen miles to {41} London to buy books or learn "anything new in Mathematics or in Music, in which sciences I then delighted." Some of these visits to London evidently lasted days or weeks. The interesting thing about these six years at Horton is that they are the only part of his life during which the least rural of our poets lived continuously in the country. And perhaps we may say that they bore their natural fruit; for it was while he was at Horton that Milton wrote _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, in which he touched rural life and rural scenes with a freshness and directness which he never again equalled. And the most important of the other poems written during these years, _Arcades_, _Comus_, and above all, _Lycidas_, show the same influence. _Arcades_ and _Comus_ point also to the effect of his visits to London and the musical world: for both of these were written for the music of his friend Henry Lawes, and probably at his suggestion; and, written as they were for entertainments given by members of the noble families of Stanley and Egerton, they show that Milton's plan of life did not involve cutting himself off from the great world, where they must have caused his name to be talked of. His life at Horton was evidently not that of a mere recluse, {42} forgetting the world outside and forgotten by it. _Arcades_ and _Comus_, and still more the wonderful outburst _At a Solemn Music_, are visible links with the cultivated circles of the town, as _Lycidas_, which followed them in 1637 and was printed in 1638 at Cambridge with other poems to the memory of Edward King, is a visible link with his old university.